The trouble of Trafficking

Trafficking turned up to your governmental schedule immediately following pressure away from feminists and the newest federal ladies’ coverage institution. To start with, feminine was indeed trafficked off The southern area of Asia (notably Thailand and the Philippines), Latin America (Columbia while the Dominican Republic and you may Africa (Ghana); after the slip of your own Berlin Wall surface, exchange paths managed to move on to help you Main and you will Eastern European countries. Governmental need was indeed identifying the latest offence far more generally to help you assists prosecution and you will improving the punishment from five to six decades, so as that offenders was stored into the remand infant custody. The newest content in the penal password on human trafficking was indeed revised in the 1993, which have a very real definition of new offence and better charges getting traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). New posts were presented inside the a good gender-neutral method, and trafficking stayed recognized as pushing one into the prostitution.

In the parliamentary debates on trafficking around that period, foreign women were portrayed as victims of unscrupulous traffickers tricked into prostitution. This framing was tied into a discourse about the divide between the rich and poor countries: female prostitutes from the ‘Third World’ were driven by poverty. Gradually, a more insidious edge crept into this discourse when Regensdorf prostitute price Christian Democrats in parliament linked trafficking to illegal migration, opening a space for ‘false’ victims, who used the loopholes in the law to work illegally as a prostitute in the Netherlands (HTK, 1991–1992, TK 81, pp. 4994, 4995, e time they also started to argue that all women from non-EU countries working in the sex industry were victims of forced prostitution. Therefore in their view, the best remedy to stop trafficking was to prevent non-EU women from working in the Dutch sex industry in the first place. This reasoning eradicated the figure of a woman migrant deciding to work as a sex worker in the West and who might make use of intermediaries to enter the country-with her consent. But then she was ‘illegal’ and ought to be deported.

Successive cabinets continued to refuse work permits on similar grounds, also arguing there was no national interest at stake which normally justifies extending work permits to non-EU persons. They were backed by a recurring majority in parliament; the parliamentary records show many references to the fear of foreign prostitutes entering the country which would subvert immigration policies. The fear resurfaced in the memorandum to the bill to lift the brothel ban, as one of the aims of the bill was to halt ‘the stream of foreign prostitutes’ (HTK 1996–97, 25437 (Opheffing Algemeen Bordeelverbod), no. 3 (Memorie van Toelichting), 1 July 1997, p. 13). The refusal to grant work permits was also generally justified by the aim of stopping the trafficking of women; permits would encourage traffickers to transport women into the country.

Categories of Sex Professionals

Then utilization of this new act led to the construction off no lower than four kinds of prostitutes. First of all, you have the ethnically undefined Dutch sex worker who willingly chooses to be hired into the prostitution and that’s the fresh bearer from civil and you can social rights. Subsequently, you’ll find the latest prostitutes from other Eu nations who will disperse freely inside and outside of your own Netherlands and you may are employed in brand new sex community. This category split into several classes following accession with the European union of your Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, this new Czech Republic and you will Slovakia during the 2004, to make a third class exactly who are only able to legally become prostitutes whenever they was basically independent sex specialists and never group. Inside the 2007, sex specialists on the the latest Eu professionals were approved into an equal footing towards elderly Eu member pros, but the third class try today full of sex gurus regarding Bulgaria and you may Romania whenever both nations registered the new Eu because same 12 months. Like their predecessors, these women can be permitted to become independent sex gurus, but up to now far less teams.